


The Better Part of Integrity

by m_class



Series: 007 Fest 2019 Angst Prompt Table [7]
Category: Goldfinger (1964), James Bond (Classic movies), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Genre: Angst, Angst Prompt Table 2019 - Grief, Bombs, Established Relationship, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Narrative Flashback, bar food, integrity and the pursuit thereof, questionably healthy relationship dynamics, vague reference to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 17:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20067535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: Once a year, Wai knows to keep her distance.





	The Better Part of Integrity

**Author's Note:**

> Each prompt fic can be read as a stand-alone or as part of the series in order.

Once a year, Tilly hates Wai, or more accurately, hates what Wai represents. On that day, Wai knows to stay away.

It isn’t that Tilly would be cruel to her. Wai has loved enough cruel people, in what she now refers to as her misspent teens, to have a radar that pings like it’s going out of style at any hint that a lover is aiming to take their wrath at the universe out on her. But the situation would be cruel to Tilly, grief and bitterness rubbing against her like sandpaper at the sight of Wai and all she represents. 

Wai is accustomed enough, in her professional life, to serving as representation--as manifestation--of a country, a group, an idea. It is, after all, the meaning of the word _ agent_. She can live with the fact that she needs to acknowledge that serving as a representation of something larger isn’t a part of herself that she gets to shrug off when she leaves work for the day.

After all, it’s what she does, and doesn’t do, within the role that she does inhabits that matters to Tilly, anyway.

She can still remember the angry puzzlement in Tilly’s voice near the end of their first, reluctant collaboration. _ You’re not trying to persuade me to trust you. _

Wai had turned to her, blinking. _ No. Why should I want you to trust me? I’m an agent of a government hostile to your current plans. It wouldn’t make sense for you to trust me. _

_ You don’t _ want _ me to trust you? _

Wai had frowned again, nonplussed, as she turned back to the explosives she was methodically setting. _ Trust me to act with integrity, perhaps, in time. But that would come from watching me do so. I doubt I could make you trust me. _

_ You wouldn’t find it gratifying? _

_ Gratifying? _

Tilly had searched her face, and whatever expression of utter confusion she had found there must have satisfied her, because she had leaned forward and kissed Wai full on the lips, and Wai had kissed her back for nearly a minute, still making perplexed noises and gesturing vaguely toward the half-finished bombs. 

_ I haven’t kissed anyone in four years, _Tilly had said, matter-of-factly, as they parted again.

_ Oh. Well. You picked quite a time for it, _Wai had managed, still bewildered.

Tilly had smiled a smile that was lopsided and exhilarated and content. _ I picked quite a woman, _she corrected.

Now, Wai sits curled in the armchair of her hotel room, locking and unlocking a pair of handcuffs without looking as she stares out the window. She hasn’t had to pick a lock in a few months, and she doesn’t intend to get rusty.

Admittedly, by this point, any semblance of challenge is over, and it’s just something to do with her hands. 

She sighs.

The thought that staying away from Tilly on the anniversary of her sister’s death is the kindest thing she can do does not sit well with her. Maybe if she was someone else, more gifted at a certain kind of comforting and finessing, she could go to her, say the right thing, make it so that her presence makes things better rather than worse--

But--no. She isn’t that kind of person, nor that kind of agent, and isn’t that the reason she and Tilly have...whatever this thing is that they have...at all? 

Sighing again, Wai gets up from the chair and tucks the handcuffs into the room safe before heading down to get something to eat. A high-stress job fraught with difficult decisions has at least taught her a few things of use in her personal life, one of them being that the thing that feels like the right thing to do isn’t always the thing that actually is the right thing to do.

So Wai Lin sits at the bar of her budget hotel, eating appetizers and reading a trashy novel, and tries to remind herself of what she told Tilly on that long-ago mission; what she intends to be. A person who acts with integrity.

Tomorrow she’ll go to Tilly, in her hotel room across the city. Today, it’s the better part of integrity to sit here and eat bar food. 

Flipping a pretzel absently through her fingers, Wai sighs and turns the next page in her book.


End file.
